If the seventeenth century in India was a century of demo¬ graphic growth, the eighteenth was of decline. All evidence in¬ variably leads to this con… - K. S. Lal

" "

If the seventeenth century in India was a century of demo¬ graphic growth, the eighteenth was of decline. All evidence in¬ variably leads to this conclusion. During the last twenty years of the seventeenth century, the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb was strenuously fighting against the Marathas and the independent Muslim kingdoms of the Deccan. In the early years of the war, the loss of life does not appear to have been great. 58 But a quarter of a century’s warfare in the Deccan did show is effects, and by the beginn¬ ing of the eighteenth century pestilence and death began to stalk the Deecan countryside. From 1702 to 1704 there was no rain, “but instead plague prevailed. In these two years there expired over two, million souls.” 57 In 1706 Aurangzeb moved northwards, “leaving behind (in the words of the eye-witness Manucci)...fields... devoid of trees and bare of crops, their place being taken by the bones of beasts. Instead of verdure all is blank and barren. The country is so entirely desolated and depopulated that neither fire nor light can be found in the course of a three or four days’ journey...” 58 This picture may be a little overdrawn. But Khafi Khan, ‘one of the best and most impartial historians’ of Mughal India, says almost the same about the Deccan... (84-85)